


The Devil Came Through Here

by doctorziegler



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: (also sort of), (sort of), Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Creatures & Monsters, Alternate Universe - Demons, Alternate Universe - Horror, Body Horror, Choking, Force-Feeding, M/M, Mildly Dubious Consent, Monster Anatomy, Monster porn, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Tentacles, Transformation, Vore
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-12-15
Updated: 2016-12-15
Packaged: 2018-09-08 14:17:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,167
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8848300
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/doctorziegler/pseuds/doctorziegler
Summary: 'You shouldn't be goin' that way, son,' they'd said, casting sidelong glances at the treeline as Jack had passed through; 'not if you know what's good for you. Nobody that goes in there ever comes out right— y'know, like, in the head— if they ever'n even come back at all.'





	

**Author's Note:**

> this is weird, and i never expected to try to try to format it for ao3 (it was originally rp), so bear with me if anything seems odd. 
> 
> i HOPE to continue this oddball story in the future, so, if you enjoy, drop a comment and let me know you'd like to see more!
> 
> [ [twitter](https://twitter.com/heatvisions) / [nsfw twitter](https://twitter.com/DOOOMZO) ]

Isolating himself from the rest of the world entirely was _probably_ not what his psychiatrist meant by 'taking himself out of stressful situations', but when someone shouting in the supermarket or a motorcycle's roar made him want to pull out the army-issued gun he didn't have in his possession anymore and start _shooting_ , Jack figured the hermit's life was the better idea. It would probably not help the whole _blah blah_ integration back into society _blah blah_ that his military higher ups were pushing, either, but if they couldn't fucking find him, well— no punishment to be had.

He left them a detailed note, anyway, in his empty apartment; he'd left next month's rent as well as a vaguely-explanatory note for his now-ex landlord; he'd taken his duffel bag stuffed with everything he could possibly need, then taken the train and the bus and then rode his mountain bike the rest of the way to... to wherever the hell he was going.

Far, far away— as deep into the wilderness and woods as he could get.

It was only by sheer luck he found a fucking ramshackle disaster of a cabin a week later.

There was no paint to speak of, but the floors and walls inside were in surprisingly good shape; there was an old iron stove, a low, small bed with no mattress to be seen, and broken glass on the floor beneath the empty window frames. But, windows aside, it was certainly better than sleeping in a tent. Mindless cleaning took Jack's mind off the dark places it always went— he fixed the shutters on the windows, laid out his sleeping mat and blanket on the bed frame, cleaned dead bugs and dust out of the stove. By the time he was done, he felt exhausted, and... strangely peaceful, maybe even accomplished.

As it were, Jack  _always_ felt like he was being watched, so the presence that stared at him the entire time he'd been performing his makeshift-renovations did nothing to bother him any more than these things usually did.

* * *

The former soldier was nothing like the lost, oft-drunk wanderers that found themselves in the little house; he was _hard,_ scarred to hell and back, with a dead-eyed expression that only survivors of war had. Though he looked into the darkening corners a few times, frowning out the windows at the peculiar sounds of the woods, he did not stop in his tasks, and did not mutter to himself.

And he slept the entire night, weapons by his side like a lover.

A few days later, he sat on the single step that served as the cabin's porch, making wooden nails to fix more parts of the house, squinting across the extremely small clearing into the dappled shadows of the forest. Despite the usual itching at the back of his neck that told him danger was near, Jack kept at what he was doing; paranoia was simply a part of his life now, and he did his best to ignore it. Obviously, if he heard a fucking bear or cougar or something similarly life-threatening, he would react— but whatever was out there, if anything, was only staring at him.

Well, let it stare down the barrel of his shotgun, if it _was_ real.

* * *

 _It_ had been in these woods for as long as the trees, and even the trees themselves feared its presence; it was _old_ , summoned here a hundred lifetimes ago at the hubris of one fool of a man who'd intended to bind it for his own benefit. The man had died in the ritual, however, and the demon he'd called had been trapped ever since, forced to wander the woods for as long as the world would continue to spin on its axis.

 

 

Hikers and those in search of adventure— those it _occasionally_ devoured, though those who came and went it tended to simply scare off; squatters and vagabonds who wandered too far into the wilderness and came upon its cabin— well.

Those were the sorts of people _no one_ would miss.

_Those_ were the sorts it ate greedily.

Jack had heard stories, urban legends as he'd made his way through the town nearby to the woods' entrance; tales of man-shaped shadows who cast no shadows of their own, tales of dozens upon dozens of men and women and even _children_ who'd gone missing for as long as the town's history could recall. _'You shouldn't be goin' that way, son,'_ they'd said, casting sidelong glances at the treeline as Jack had passed through; _'not if you know what's good for you. Nobody that goes in there ever comes out right— y'know, like, in the head— if they ever'n even come back at all.'_

Of course, he hadn't listened to them— these were a simple people, reciting old wives' tales that had been told to them, as children, to keep them from going into the woods at night, for their own safety.

Against real, real-life threats; not _monsters_.

Jack thanked the townspeople for their concern, of course; said he'd take their warnings to heart.

Then, he passed through the treeline, and the townsfolk prayed they'd never see him again.

Not now that the woods had him.

* * *

The woods almost seemed to call to men like him: the _broken_ sort of man; the sort of man that society would never miss. 

The perfect meal for _it_.

For the first few days, the hungry demon stood in Jack's makeshift-bedroom doorway, watching the soldier tremble and moan throughout his fitful, nightmarish slumber; after a week, the demon stood imposingly at the foot of Jack's bed, a looming, too-tall shadow outlined by the moonlight, its multitude of red eyes flickering in and out of existence with every beat of Jack's thundering heart.

Jack Morrison was used to staring down his monsters, his own personal demons, no matter what sort of fucked-up form they took.

Jack Morrison had yet to meet a monster quite so willing to stare _right_ back.

As he always did a few times per night— or day— Jack gripped the handle of his always-loaded gun and pointed it, this time at the foot of his bed. The smoky shape didn't move, just _loomed_ there, a specter first, then more of a demon, with all those eyes, the flicker of a bone-white, avian face. He stared back, squinting in the dark, heart in his throat; his demons did not usually _look_ so demonic, but maybe being alone was making him go crazier.

Well, fine, whatever; he had never been one to believe in the supernatural, the paranormal, and he attributed the sight to his own hallucinations.

Then the old soldier did something none of the demon's previous victims ever had; Jack flipped him off, muttered something under his breath, rolled over and went back to sleep.

The soldier's heart had been thundering in his chest like a jackhammer, and yet— and yet he hadn't _truly_ been afraid, not like all those who'd come before him. The demon exhaled an icy-cold breath against the man's weathered face, a sensation that Jack would later convince himself had come from the _window_ , obviously, and not from a much-too-wide mouth with far too many teeth hovering barely an inch away from him.

The demon watched the soldier sleep, then, just there, as close as could be, for the remainder of the night.

No one had _ever_ challenged it before, not even with an action so subtle.

In the unnatural darkness, the demon _grinned_.

It hadn't gotten to play with its food in a very, _very_ long time.

* * *

The thing was still there when he woke up, and Jack continued to ignore it, the stupid, weird, not-there grim reaper-looking motherfucker. His hallucinations usually kept to quite human shapes, old comrades, enemies, concerned family members chiding him in his ear, endless chatter. This one was silent and waiting, hungry, getting in his way as he cooked breakfast and blocking the sunlight from the window. It felt cold, though it was starting to get colder in general, and Jack glared at it as he shoveled food into his face before it got cold.

_God_ , it was fucking terrifying looking, in a horror-movie kinda way; the kind of shit kids described to each other as the thing lurking in the basement. All oil-black and full of eyes and teeth and claws. Jack cocked his head at his new imaginary friend and stared back into its red eyes before finally, for the first time in almost two weeks, speaking. "You— are one _ugly_  fuck."

The Reaper, as Jack had begun referring to it in his mind, actually _responded_ to his unexpected insult, despite the fact that it hadn't ever before acknowledged Jack's scrutinizing attention. Typically, no matter _how_ long their staring contests might go on for— and they were _long_ , seeing as Jack had little else to do, most days— the demon remained uncomfortably still, and unflinchingly silent.

This time, however, at Jack's verbal acknowledgement of its existence, the thing in the darkness spoke _back_ , in a voice quite unlike anything Jack had ever heard before.

"You're no prize, yourself, ' _handsome_ '," it sounded... _human_ , but wrong, somehow, its voice summoning the uncomfortable sensation of the uncanny valley— something that _may_ have been human, if it weren't for some base instinct informing you that it most definitely was _not_. Its monstrous mouth didn't move as it spoke, long tongue escaping the confines of its teeth, like a snake tasting the air around it.

Jack _laughed,_ a harsh bark of a thing, like he didn't remember how to do it any more, shrugging his shoulders as if to say 'what can you do?' The voice sounded unearthly, like a bad recording or something, tinny to his shitty hearing aids. And that tongue was _creepy;_ why did he have to come up with something like _this_ to keep him company? "Bomb blew up in my face. Probably why I'm talking to something that isn't really there."

"You think you're _crazy_ ," the Reaper replied, with what could only be described as amusement in its unearthly voice. When the thing moved nearer to Jack, it was like watching black smoke and shadows twisting, endlessly looping and twining until it was suddenly much too close to ignore. "Do you hallucinate monsters often enough that this actually seems  _normal_ to you?" Clawed hands rested atop the human's tense shoulders; the Reaper leaned over Jack's back as it spoke, its mouth near enough to Jack's ear that he could feel its breath.

"Most of the monsters I hallucinate are human-shaped," Jack casually admitted. His hands stilled their endless task of messing with wood, the grip on the military knife he was holding tightening. "Nothing normal about it, it's just the only logical explanation here." He had had delusions bad enough that he'd physically felt them before, though that was in the middle of a horrific mania episode; he didn't feel _manic,_ just... odd. Outside of himself His throat hurt from talking already; he couldn't believe he'd been so subconsciously desperate for company that he'd conjured up this. Thing. To talk to.

" _I'm_ human-shaped," it insisted, its form shifting and slinking around until it was sitting atop a tree stump directly across from Jack, legs crossed and head cocked. "I can even _look_ human, if that'd be more effective. Maybe you're the sort that isn't afraid of _bogey_ men, but of men themselves."

All at once, the Reaper's body seemed to solidify, tendrils of shadows disappearing into it until it was no longer simply _it_ , but _him_. He was tall, at _least_ on par with Jack's own impressive height, and just as muscular— his fingernails were black, and his eyes remained red, unnaturally so. What bits of his skin weren't obscured by skintight leather were dark, a deep, rich shade of almost ashen mahogany; his hair was short-cropped curls, and his mouth seemed to be twisted into a permanent snarl.

He was Jack's _exact_  type of man, almost like he'd reached into Jack's psyche and based himself off of the first fantasy he'd stumbled across. "Better? I'll feel pretty useless if I can't frighten you even a little."

Jack didn't respond for a long moment, eyebrows raising as he stared at the monster-man across from him with no small amount of scrutiny. Now he really _was_ convinced he was hallucinating; there was no way anything other than his own mind would have come up with this, or even known his attraction to men. He had always been a stubbornly private man, and his dating life was a dusty, empty cupboard, to be honest; people found him difficult to deal with, and he felt the same about most men he'd gone out with.

And here was an amalgamation of 'his type' smirking at him, warped only by those eyes and the little wisps of black Jack was sure he could still see along the planes of his skin. "Sorry, but that's even _less_ frightening than before." He shook his head, pressing the pad of his thumb against the dull side of his knife. "Maybe try looking less handsome next time, 'grim reaper'."

The man's attractive features flickered briefly out of existence, as if Jack's aloof dismissal of his humanoid appearance somehow offended him strongly enough that it became challenging to maintain his form. "It seems as though a _fearless_ man has wandered into my home," as he spoke, the Reaper's mouth seemed to change, becoming wider, with far too many, far too _sharp_ teeth lining both top and bottom jaw. "What am I to do with you, 'Jack Morrison', if you refuse to participate in my games?"

All of a sudden, the monster lunged forward, its features warping into something _truly_ horrifying, with too many eyes, too many teeth, too many arms; too much _blackness_. It enveloped Jack without hesitation, swallowing the man whole before even his military-honed instincts had the chance to kick in. "Why don't I show you," it whispered from the darkness that surrounded, embraced, _suffocated_ Jack, " _just_ what there is to be afraid of _—_ "

It was like being buried alive, though the sensation was nothing like anything Jack had experienced before. He struggled to breathe, dropping his knife as he tried to thrash his way out of its grip. _Not real_ , he tried to remind himself; _it's not real_. But it felt like breath on his face and teeth in the back of his neck, like being enveloped in thick, suffocating _something_ solid.

Jack's heart was in his throat, and when he couldn't tear his way out of the black, he ended up with his hands over his head and neck, eyes screwed shut and gritting his teeth, wheezing to breathe. _Stop stop stop_ —

" _Breathe_ ," the voice in his ear encouraged, a pair of inhuman hands coming to rest atop his hips, another pair tenderly cradling his jaw, all the while claws raked up and down and _through_ the thin fabric of Jack's t-shirt. "Let me in, Jack. I'm not even _real_ , remember? You said it yourself. All you've got to do is breathe your panic away."

_Open your mouth for me, Jack; I swear, I'm the greatest high you'll ever have_.

The pressure squeezing his chest like a vice let up slightly, enough that Jack instinctively gasped for a deeper breath, lips parting in the process. Then his mouth was suddenly forced wide open, filled by an indescribable taste and thickness like what was smothering him. His eyes flew open again in shock, seeing only teeth and blackness as his throat filled, too, the demonic _thing_ digging razor claws into his chest as it did. Jack made a choked, breathless, panicked noise in response, unable to do much of anything else.

It was almost like inhaling smoke, if smoke could be so dense that it had its own weight. The Reaper let out a satisfied chuckle, stroking something that felt like a prehensile tongue along the side of Jack's handsome face as he continued to force-feed him the mysterious black substance. "Very good," he purred, watching bemusedly as Jack struggled to adapt to the simple act of breathing through his nose while his throat was otherwise occupied. "Don't fight it, Jack. Breathe, let me in; _swallow_. Drink me down. You'll feel _so_ much better soon—"

Jack felt like a drowning man, body shuddering and tensing as he struggled to accommodate the creature's... self, most likely. If this was a hallucination, he had probably gone utterly insane, or eaten something _really_ bad.

But the worst part was that he was finally starting to doubt that it was his mind playing tricks. The more it— _he_ , maybe, Jack saw the handsome man in his mind's eye— pushed down his throat, the stranger he felt; light-headed, dizzy, hot. He realized dimly that he'd sunk to his knees, palms flat on the ground, each breath drawing it into him more.

As Jack collapsed, the monster began freeing the man from the confines of his clothing, t-shirt coming apart in tatters beneath its sharp claws. The Reaper knew Jack was far too consumed with what was currently happening to his mouth to be concerned with anything else— which meant that Jack hardly struggled as his pants and underwear were torn down, exposing his hips to the suffocating presence within Reaper's shadowed mass.

A particularly thick gob of _black_ spurted down Jack's throat, the smoky thing— tentacle, tendril, _whatever—_  in his mouth pulsing and throbbing as it pumped him full of the Reaper's essence. "You feel so _good_ inside of me, Jack," the monster cooed, coiling itself around Jack more intimately, squeezing him like a lover as a slippery knot of shadow beginning to push its way eagerly between the man's buttocks. "I feel like I could swallow you _whole—_ "

The monster was _not_ kidding when it said he'd get a high; Jack was dimly aware of his body involuntarily relaxing, head lolling back limply as lukewarm liquid hit his stomach. He could still feel the huge teeth at the back of his neck, the tongue stroking up his spine. All the horrible, dull, throbbing pains he just dealt with in his body seemed to melt away the more he relaxed, the more of this... _stuff_ he swallowed down.

Jack's eyes were heavy and unfocused, little spasms rocking him as he realized too late what was going on aside from his raw mouth. He made a small sound of half-hearted protest, trying to squeeze his hands into fists and finding himself too weak. He felt hot, full, almost _—_ stupidly, inexplicably _—..._   _safe_ , inside this black roiling mass.

It penetrated Jack so easily that the man hardly noticed, at first; there was that mysterious black liquid _everywhere_ , spurting out of the tendril delving deep into Jack's most intimate places and dripping insistently down his throat alike. It tasted like nothing, yet it was easily the most delectable thing Jack had _ever_ tasted, the sort of thing you could get addicted to overnight _—_ a drug, almost _literally_ a drug, down to the fact that it wasn't something you could even realize you enjoyed until you were too high to know any better.

The age-old pains that had haunted Jack for as long as he could remember simply faded away, leaving behind a heightened sense of euphoria, of an almost holy sort; Jack Morrison had never been the praying type, but this felt the way he'd heard religious ecstasy was supposed to feel.

"Let me have _all_ of you, Jack," the thing inside of him pulsed, filling him to the brim with _—_ with _something_ , just as thick and gooey as whatever was being forced into his stomach. "I'll make it _all_ better, baby _—_ "

Absently, Jack wondered: when _was_ the last time he had felt pleasure, much less a total absence of pain? His body responded even when he couldn't, swallowing rhythmically, not fighting the penetration with anything more than a soft whimper. Jack's unfocused eyes finally closed, succumbing to the blissful call of unconsciousness.

* * *

The next thing he recalled with clarity was waking in his bed, hardly able to move. He groaned quietly, frowning in his half-awake state; he felt extremely weak, but other than that...

Jack still felt _good_.

His eyes fluttered open, making to sit up _—_ and was suddenly hit with the urge to cough. A spike of pain shot up his spine and he gasped, sticky black fluid pouring from his lips as he did. Within seconds he was doubled over, coughing up what Reaper had pumped him full of, the black liquid dribbling from his nose and down his chin.

The mysterious black liquid was _everywhere_ , trickling down Jack's thighs when he stood, bed sheets drenched from where he'd been laying. With every mouthful Jack spat into the sink, his stomach churned in sudden distress, almost as if _—_ as if _it_ , whatever _it_ was, didn't want to be expelled. Wanted to remain exactly where it was, as if it had a mind of its own _—_ pumping through Jack's veins, the sweetest, most soothing liquid morphine the older soldier had ever experienced.

When Jack raised his head to examine his own reflection in the mirror, a black figure stood behind him, filling up the doorway without any true sense of aggression.

"Rough night?" The monster's Cheshire, too-wide grin stretched across its featureless face, bathed in only the thinnest strips of sunlight slipping through the billowing curtains in the bedroom. "Looks like you could use a little, ah, what's it called; 'hair of the dog', maybe _—"_

Jack stared at it _—_ him _—_ like he couldn't actually see him, briefly glassy-eyed. It tasted fucking _weird—_  not bad _—_ and the pain that was creeping back into his dulled senses made his body scream in protest, wanting to keep the bizarre makeshift painkiller in his system.

This wasn't what he meant when he'd argued with his doctor over stronger drugs. "...Wh..." His voice came out wet and warbled, and Jack coughed again, brow furrowed. "What _is_ this?"

"It's _me_ ," the Reaper said, as if that explained everything away. Clawed hands warmed their way up Jack's back, coming to rest atop the old soldier's shoulders while the monster made eye contact with him in the cracked bathroom mirror. "My 'essence', I guess you could call it. My blood, my spit _—_ my _come_."

That long, prehensile tongue dragged across Jack's jawline, the monster oozing into his space as if he intended to envelop him all over again. "It made you feel so _good_ , didn't it? Strong, and without pain, for the first time in _years._ "

The makeshift sink was full of what looked like ink now; he would have to empty it, later, once the damned monster saw fit to leave him alone.

What would happen if he dumped that shit in the river, though? Jack stared at it as the rest of the room briefly spun around him, little waves of dizziness and nausea washing over him. His legs trembled and he gripped the sides of the rough wooden table the bucket was resting on to keep himself upright. His body was at war with itself, fighting to both expel the liquid and keep it inside. The demon _—_ bastard _— thing_ sounded so pleased with himself, stroking sharp nails up and down the curve of Jack's back; he couldn't even deny it when his body was trying to tell him he wanted _more_.

"...Fuck." He sounded breathless, coughing up nothing as his stomach lurched. " _Why_ the hell _—_ "

The person-shaped shadow shrugged, form shifting until _it_ became _he_ again, the same frustratingly handsome man had seen for the very first time not even twenty-four hours prior. "Because I think you're interesting," he explained, though he sounded only somewhat honest, like he was still withholding some small portion of the entire truth. "I've never had anyone here so convinced I was just another  _hallucination_ of theirs before. I guess that makes you the first legitimately _insane_ person who's come through my woods, Jackie-boy."

The Reaper turned Jack around abruptly, standing face to face with him now, close enough that the beast's lips brushed against Jack's own as he spoke. "Madness begets madness, after all. I feel like we're _connected_ , in some deep, proverbial way _—_  don't you?"

As far as Jack was concerned, the monster was right about one thing _—_ he was _absolutely_ out of his mind, and being around this thing was only making it worse. ( _But you can't just go back now_ , said a nasty little voice in his head; _you'll snap even faster at this rate, take a dozen people with you in a fit of terrified rage—_ )

Jack's pale eyes narrowed until they were blue slits at the imitation of a kiss, not letting the Reaper between his lips just yet. "Ah. So you're a _lonely_ demon. I see."

"That's something else we have in common," the Reaper pecked Jack on the lips despite the man's visible uncertainty; obviously, it didn't hold consent in very high regard. "We're _both_ demons by definition, aren't we? I'm sure an isolated being like me's hardly taken as many lives as _you_ , the decorated soldier."

Maybe only a dozen _—_ or fewer _—_ people had stumbled into this thing's lair throughout its time trapped here _—_ how did _that_ stack up, compared to an efficient killer of Jack's extraordinarily high caliber?

The jab hit Jack like a needle in the heart, sending ice through his veins in direct opposition to the warmth the inky blackness had given him. Jack knew very well that that was true; he had a confirmed kills list that would make anyone sick with how long it was. It was why he had been seeing a therapist; it was why therapy hadn't helped at all.

It was why he had run away from it all, in the first place. The Reaper's lips brushed his again, and Jack let out a shuddering sigh, eyes dropping to the ground for a moment. "... Probably true," his voice was dull.

The Reaper sighed dramatically, moving out of Jack's immediate vicinity and giving the man some space to breathe. "That wasn't intended as an insult, you know. I _like_ that you've got blood all that on your hands."

Setting foot outside of the shack, the monster looked... _odd_ , out of place in the direct sunlight, his unnatural presence doing its fair share to interrupt the otherwise picturesque woodland scenery. "I'll leave you alone _—_ for now," there was more than a hint of promise in the beast's voice, its face warping as it threw Jack a flirtatious glance from over its shoulder. "Oh, before I forget _—_ you _should_  head into town, though. Pick up a few dozen pounds of steak, if you can afford it. You'll, ah, be needing it soon enough."

With that, the Reaper vanished, leaving Jack to ponder its parting words.

* * *

Jack, in true stubborn fashion, did his damnedest _not_ to think about anything Reaper said; though the implication of the monster's 'essence' making him hungry were clear, he did not want to try and figure out why.

Or for _what_.

* * *

Three days later, Jack was polishing off the rest of a deer he had shot. It had not been a small animal, yet he was picking the last remains of flesh from its bones barely two days after killing it.

The smell of sizzling meat over the tiny stove had made him nigh-ravenous, just yesterday, but now he felt impatient _—_ he wanted to just snatch it off the fire and devour it half-cooked. Jack grit his teeth until his jaw popped; despite the warm spring weather and the heat, he felt cold.

( _You want more_ , whispered the nasty little voice in his head. _Already a fucking addict_.)

He made a muffled noise into his knuckles, a wheezing sound of pure frustration, punching his fist into the floor a few times before snatching just _one_ piece of meat off the pan and shoving it into his mouth, heedless of burns.

As it were, the meat tasted _exquisite_ , even better than the very first bite he'd taken after initially taking the creature down. Of course, he'd cooked it properly, then _—_ so, why was it that now, with blood still oozing out of its half-charred meat, that the flavor seemed _improved_? Jack had never been a fan of rare meat _—_ medium-well was his usual preference, the kind of steak you'd typically get fresh off the grill during a backyard barbecue, so _—_ why _—_   _why—_

The meat continued to pop and sizzle as it cooked, blood and sinew being sapped by the heat of the stove. 

( _What if_ , that voice whispered again, both his own voice and the Reaper's, their tones intermingling. _What if you tried a piece completely raw? Just a_ small _piece, though,_ just _to see if it tastes as good as before—_ )

_That's how you get parasites_ , he argued with himself, logic weakly fighting the bizarre growing urge. Jack tried to ignore it, thinking instead of how to use the rest of the carcass; but the idea of making stock or bleaching the bones into something useful seemed wholly boring.

Jack realized his hand was hovering near the raw cuts of meat. They were probably unsafe. It was too hard for human teeth to chew raw meat. Despite that, the taste of blood bloomed on his tongue anyway, almost before he knew what he was doing. Jack wanted to choke, expected to gag, and instead found himself reaching for another piece.

* * *

The deer had not been enough _—_ nor had the next, nor the next. By the fourth doe he'd killed in a week, Jack knew something was _seriously_  wrong, having devoured his latest catch within _—_ what? _Hours_? After hardly bothering to skin it, let along cook it.

He was eating raw meat, _literally_ off the bone, like some _—_ like some kind of _—_

_Like some kind of monster_ , finished the voice in his head. 

"Just. Like. _Me_."

As Jack turned away from the mauled deer's carcass, the Reaper enveloped him, offering up a kindly 'dessert' to chase Jack's insistent fears away.

He was shaking, full-body tremors, his vision spinning and his stomach wracked with nausea before the Reaper pulled him in, washing over him like a pitch-black ocean.

Jack offered up no protest to the coils tightening around his body, letting his head fall back as Reaper pushed himself down his throat and gave him the _other_ thing he'd been starving for. The thick liquid calmed his panicked nerves, sent him into an exhausted, hazy, euphoric state; much later, he'd vaguely remembered the sensation of Reaper spreading him open and fucking him again, murmuring things he _couldn't_ later recall in his ear, never letting up on filling him to the brim even as he twisted weakly in faux-protest.

_Drink up, sweet thing_ , the demon soothed, pumping Jack's stomach full of black sludge he'd been so desperately craving; _you'll need your strength, baby, because tomorrow? Tomorrow, we're going_ hunting _._

[TBC]


End file.
